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We started this week’s show off by reviewing how we, as writers and publishers, have improved in the 25 weeks we’ve been doing this podcast. We all seemed to feel that we’ve gotten better, faster, and generally more efficient and effective, but we couldn’t say how. Love that specificity. But Sean did have one announcement:
Tucker Max is going to be on the show
You may know Tucker Max as the asshole who wrote I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, among other popular titles that all make him look like an asshole. I asked Sean, who enticed Tucker to come on in a few weeks via a plot that surely involved rohypnol, if Tucker was an asshole in person, and he said, “Oh yeah, he’s a total cock.” So of course we decided we had to have him on when we talk about dealing with haters. So stay tuned.
(NOTE: I hadn’t been to Tucker’s site before writing this, and now I see that his site begins with the line “My name is Tucker Max, and I am an asshole.” The circle is complete.)
Questions!
We then answered questions from Kevin about how to publish a book in the UK and make it available everywhere (just publish it in the UK store and check the right boxes), from Gareth about writing tools we like (Scrivener is our baby, but there were a few other tips on this one), and from Tom about why you can’t set your price below $0.99 on Amazon now (to our knowledge, it’s always been that way). Then we had margaritas.
A long discussion on our writing processes
A large part of the fodder for this discussion was this post I wrote, called “From Idea to Publication on Kindle in 29 Days,” so you might want to read it and/or follow along. (Even DAVE said it was good!)
But anyway, we spent the last half of the show talking about how we outline our work, write first drafts, edit our own stuff, send it out to beta readers and/or editors, and generally how we work.
A huge part of this discussion was devoted to Sean beating the shit out of me for not using an outside editor, most recently on my new book Fat Vampire. I had the impossible task of defending myself without looking like some sort of an assbag elitist, but I still don’t want to use an editor even though I can’t defend the decision. I really had no way to win here, so you’ll enjoy this section if you like carnage.
To view the video version of this episode, go to: Self Publishing Podcast #25 – Writing Processes that Will Make You a Better Writer
Hi guys – happy to answer the UK tax question
but for the legal stuff, I’m not an accountant or a lawyer, so don’t sue me!
1) Tax for non-US publishers – here’s the official KDP info:
You have to have EIN or ITIN and file a SS-4 in order that Amazon doesn’t withhold the income tax – like 30%, so it is critical that you do this if you’re expecting great sales and are not in the US. You also have to file the SS-4 at Smashwords and any other US distributor. Sounds complicated but it’s not when you bite the bullet and do it & once it’s done, it’s done.
https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/help?topicId=A1VDYJ32T5D3U4
I have a EIN for my business, it was pretty easy
2) The VAT stuff in the UK is handled by Amazon, so you just get the royalty payment – different to the above.
3) We all publish on the same KDP platform and you just select the markets to publish to – so just select all and it will be sold on the UK store as well as .com. If you sell your rights to a specific market, you can still publish in other markets.
4) I have a USD bank account in the UK and pay Amazon income into that from the .com store and account per monthly exchange rate. I pay UK income tax for my UK company but include the US tax reports from Amazon in my filing.
I hope that helps
Thanks, Joanna
PS. Scrivener is a life-changer
PPS. I am so looking forward to Tucker Max
Very helpful – tax makes my head hurt.
It’s me again
on the Amazon only exclusivity thing. I agree with you right now to a point (although I am on all stores) but I think that Kobo is the player that will challenge Amazon outside of the US & UK, not B&N Nook.
You guys are very US centric (naturally!) but Kobo is taking off elsewhere and is taking the other countries – they’re also getting bigger http://www.engadget.com/2012/10/10/kobo-to-buy-aquafadas-get-magazines-academic-texts-comics-and/
They are owned by Japanese company Rakuten, and are into Africa emerging markets as well as Asia, everywhere that Amazon is not I guess.
Kobo Writing Life is an awesome site, great user experience and what is stand-out for non-US publishers is that Kobo pay monthly, in the author’s currency, electronically. Amazon can’t do this yet so I have to get USD checks & the associated fees whereas Kobo money just arrives in my bank account.
I think the huge growth that will happen next is the global markets, as the US & UK are slowing down. Being exclusive may well be fine now, but what about in the next few years?
TOTALLY agree on Kobo.
Exclusivity will make sense for us for maybe another year. Next year will be really interesting. Because we have Select, next year will be an even bigger deal since it really kicks into gear when we’re promoting a second or third season, which is ALL of next year.
But I definitely don’t want to be exclusive forever.
Yay for Tucker Max! I’ve been a fan for almost 10 years now and have been called the “female version of Tucker Max” (you can read about it in my naughty memoir novella “Spilled Perfume” coming 2013). P.S. I won’t tell him that NONE of you guys could remember his name when he was brought up on a previous podcast
Ha, I’ll tell him. He’ll think that’s hysterical!
I was once in an interview with someone else who couldn’t remember his name, and instead said, “… that huge book by that asshole.” I couldn’t remember either, but we successfully completed the discussion, knowing exactly who he was talking about.
@Johnny:
Structural editors like Victoria Mixon and Larry Brooks can address flow, storyline, character arc-type problems.
Line editing can tighten what you write without changing what you say.
Ex Sentence: There are many people that offer really bad advice on how to use twitter. (14 words)
Ex Sentence polished: Lots of people offer terrible Twitter advice. (7 words, no meaning lost)
Great distinction, Shane. Thanks!!
Enjoyed the podcast ….still trying to make my way back through the back catalogue!
Got some homework for you….you talk about Stephen King’s “On Writing” as your guide to writing quite a bit. Have you read King’s earlier work Dance Macabre? This would have to be something that would interest all of you – it’s a non fiction book that contains Kings thoughts on horror in TV, Film and Fiction.
Plus there’s some interesting auto biographical stuff about his writing and methods in there too. Will definitely interest you guys….I think it was written in the mid 80s….would love to see him update it now. Through it I found Shirly Jackson’s book The Haunting of Hill House, Anne Rivers Siddons The House Next Door, Harlan Ellison, (I think) Silence of the Lambs before it went mainstream (I’ve got 1st or 2nd edition from 87, and King provided a ‘blurb’ for either the front or the back), The Incredible Shrinking Man (plus Matheson’s short stories), Something Wicked This Way Comes (Bradbury’s finest? and I loved King riffing on the train whistle, wicked!), and a bunch more.
Seriously if you guys have not read this book you will freaking love it!
Also I found out – last week I think – that at the time On Writing was released, there was also another book released as a ‘sister’ book that was a Book Club exclusive. It’s called Secret Windows: Essays On The Art and Craft of Fiction writing. (I think).
DOn’t know what this is like…but I had to track down a second hand copy and have ordered it…but seeing as you guys as such fanboys of On Writing I think you’ll probably like this too.
And you’ll definitely like Dance Macabre if you haven’t read it already!
Rock on.
JJ
Ha, I DID read that, but only half of it, and I was like 12. I’d read everything else from King at the time so I tried that. But I didn’t like it, lol. Totally different person now, I’m sure I’d love it. Thanks!
Dude
You will SOOOO love it!
Hi, guys! I started listening to your podcast a couple of months ago, and I’ve really enjoyed it! I come to all this from the podcasting side of things. I’ve been podcasting my novels since 2008 and was involved in that community of audio self-publishers (mostly centered around Podiobooks.com) when self-publishing blew up in 2010. I started publishing ebooks in Dec of that year. The differences between the (relatively) established podcasting community and the (relatively) new ebook self-publishing community are interesting to me.
You were talking about the Kindle Select thing, and I wanted to add that you can’t just hop on and off of sites like BN, Kobo, and SW and expect to get good results there. I sell about 2/3 of my books on Amazon and about 1/3 elsewhere, but I doubt I’d sell any elsewhere if I didn’t leave the books up. You have to build organic reviews and ranking, and each time you pull your books from those sites to go with KDP Select, you lose all that. You start over again from scratch when you re-enter 90 days later. That’s the danger and the problem with Select.
Kobo has done a clever thing by tying its reviews to Goodreads. The penalty for hopping on and off Kobo is not so steep because you don’t lose the reviews. Goodreads is not a market, so Amazon lets your books stay there and all the reviews will still exist when you come back to Kobo. That’s smart, IMO. However, you still lose ranking and any reviews that you’ve generated on Kobo’s site.
BN, on the other hand, is entirely its own ecosystem. It would be a huge risk for me to pull steady sellers from BN to put them into Select. They might never recover.
I also wanted to make a comment about the editing. None of you asked what I believe is the critical question: Do your fans care?
Is anyone *not* buying Fat Vampire because of the editing? Will anyone not finish it because of the editing? Will anyone decide not to buy the next book because of the editing? If the answers are “no,” then the choice to edit is about your personal pride and insecurity, not your readers or your business. That’s not necessarily a bad reason to have a pro edit. I buy interior artwork that I know will not increase sales simply because it gives me joy, but it’s important to me that I make the distinction.
I use volunteers from my fan base for typo hunt-and-destroy, and I use a handful of trusted friends (some of whom edit for work in real life) for content editing. I tried paying a pro editor. I released books both ways and found that my readers did not care. No one is *not* buying Prophet or Cowry Catchers because of the low level of typos they find. No one is failing to proceed to the next book because they don’t like my sentence structure. (They may fail to proceed to the next book because they don’t like the gay sex, but it’s not the sentence structure!)
So the question I ask myself is: Why should I pay thousands of dollars for something that doesn’t matter to my readers and listeners? My conclusion is, “I shouldn’t.” I’ll change that in a heartbeat if my audience tells me otherwise, but that’s what I get from them now. Every book, author, and audience is different, so your results may vary. This has nothing to do with thinking that you are better than other authors. It has everything to do with what your audience seems to care about.
Anyway, I kept stopping the podcast to internally make these comments. That is a sign of an excellent podcast. Keep it up!
That’s all very true, and without our volume I doubt we’d want to be exclusive to Amazon. But being series based with rotating episodes that can lead new readers into our series, it just doesn’t make sense for us to split from what’s working.
I do believe in Kobo, and in the mass broadcast of being everywhere, but only when we can afford to do so. Right now, we can do Kindle really well, but anything else will split our returns.
As for professional edits, it sounds like you’re getting them, even if they’re not “professional” edits. Even if readers don’t complain, you never want their lizard brain distracted. Happy readers are frequent readers.
Sean – after listening back to this show, THIS is the point I was trying to make but kept tripping over:
I do want opinions and edits and don’t expect MY word to be the only word… I just don’t feel like I want to pay someone who I don’t know and whose opinion I don’t know whether I can trust to give those opinions and edits to me.
I agree with that! You just need someone outside yourself.
Sean – Yeah, it makes sense to keep going with what’s working. I don’t think that folks who are using Select are doing anything wrong. I think there’s probably a growing group of readers who shop mostly on Select (just as I now shop mostly with Amazon Prime for physical items). If that’s enough to keep you fed, then it may be all you ever need!
However, I hear a lot of Select authors saying things like, “I can leave anytime,” and it’s true, but it ignores the real issue. They don’t seem to recognize the disadvantage of hopping on and off other sites – the loss of rankings and reviews. If you do start on Kobo or BN, recognize that you’ll have to play a bit of catch-up.
A while back, I did a little ad campaign with Project Wonderful. Here’s the ad I used – http://cowrycatchers.com/CC-Ad-index.html I didn’t have a Kobo button because Writing Life had just opened, but I had one for Amazon, BN, and SW. I got around 150 click-throughs over a couple of days. About 60% were Amazon, 20% BN, and 20% SW. Whether or not you think advertising is cost-effective (it’s probably not), this was interesting data to me. Fully 40% of the type of people interested in my books did not go to Amazon when given a choice. And Kobo wasn’t even up there! These results also correspond pretty well with my data from actual sales.
So, I don’t think you’re crazy for going with Select, but people like me aren’t crazy, either.
For the editing – I should probably add that my friends and readers did a better job than the paid pro. They caught a lot of things that she didn’t. And she came highly recommended! This was another reason that I stopped with the paid thing. I found that a volume of eyeballs is better than any one magic set of eyeballs. 12 different people will catch 12 different sets of errors. Different readers notice different kinds of mistakes. The overlap between the mistakes they catch is frighteningly small. The more eyeballs, the better.
…because eyeballs are delicious. Wait, no, sorry, wrong podcast!
I totally agree with all of that. One of the reasons Dave and I aren’t going on other platforms is that we can’t go all out. If we had fewer books, or a different model, I’m sure I’d feel differently about alternate venues. And I actually do now, just not specific to us. I think your points are well articulated, and right on.
Can’t believe I’ve only just found your podcast now — LOVE the topics and the way you guys just shoot the shit. Respect.
I’m a freelance editor so call me biased if you want (I do), but I think for sure a pro editor helps if your aim is to increase awesomeness while saving yourself a load of revision time. Our own mistakes and bad writing habits are way too familiar to be easily visible to us, and beta readers are great but rarely critical enough. You need experience to maintain a critical focus all the way through a good book (and not just get caught up in the pleasure of reading). A good editor takes a lot of time to consider everything from multiple angles, because people interpret things differently.
But yeah, as an author, be choosy… it’s so important to find a co-pilot who “gets” you and can immerse themselves in your voice without effing with your style. I think a good editor gets inside your head (evil, I know), offers questions and suggestions instead of laws, and recognizes when to put aside “The Rules” for the sake of language play. They should enhance your voice, not domesticate it.
I’d say, always get a sample edit first, and only hire the editor if they click with you on a personal level. I guess for anything higher level than proofreading, it’s way more like choosing a midwife than choosing a mechanic.
Sorry this comes through a bit late but I was travelling and didn’t have net access last week. I think that while listening to your discussion about whether an outside editor is worthwhile can be summed up in two sentences about why you should get an outside editor:
Right now, Fat Vampire is good enough for a 5 star review on Amazon and is worth buying.
Right now, Fat Vampire is only good enough for a 3 or 4 star review at Good Reads but could easily be worth a 5 star review with a little polishing.
I enjoyed the book and would encourage folks to buy it and will continue to buy books in the series as they come out, but a little polishing can only help. As for taking the time out to do it now, that’s the beauty of the current publishing platform…you can get speed of implementation and start making sales, then turn around and invest those early profits in having somebody else polish your book for you while you continue to bring out new books until you have enough of a platform to pay for those edits up front w/o going underwater at all, which will only help future purchasers and your fan base to grow that much quicker. Until you have multiple books, though, it isn’t as important.
Yeah, I hear you… I’m actually planning to take FV through another pass or two this fall, after I get 2 up. The quick turnaround has me wondering if I could do better.
By the way, on another note you can get Scrivener for Mac for $29 right now (along w/a bunch of other apps) at Mac Heist 4: http://macheist.com/#app84info
(no financial interest)
Just saw it this morning and thought your readers might be interested.
Thanks, Blaine! That was a great deal!
Hey guys,
First, a pox upon Sean and Johnny for putting the editing question back in my brain. I listened to this podcast yesterday and spent the evening debating the issue in my head. “Sean’s right! No, Johnny’s right!” I finally went to bed, just to get the voices out of my brain. But then I woke up this morning and couldn’t get off the can before the voices returned.
Damn you.
I think, for a new author like myself, who doesn’t have an audience, using even even just a copy editor is too expensive. My new book has 45K words. A copy edit from Createspace will cost $540. Plus, throw in another $200 or so for a cover, and I’m looking at an expensive book that–at least right now–no one is going to buy. Now, my first novel only had one beta reader, and no editor. And I took some knocks on it. Since then, I’ve compensated by doing three things: one, i use at least 3 beta readers now, and one of them is an English teacher; two, I did some Google searching on how to copy edit; three, I read the shit out of my drafts, often out loud.
It seems like paying for edits works for Sean and Dave because of their process; they only pay for 10-15K words out at a time, then they put those words out to start making them money while they prepare the next episode.
Eric,
It’s definitely a tough cost to tackle. As for the “we only pay for 10-15k words at a time and put it out while the others make us money,” you have to remember that we’re not paid immediately. AND we’re writing books six weeks in a row, so the cost is still there. We all have to wait for royalty checks, so it’s not like one funds another immediately.
It is an expense you have to lay out for ahead of time. The cost of doing business, in other words. I suppose it’s possible to not use editors (as Johnny has done) and find success, provided you spend enough time on the book, know your grammar, and have beta readers.
I’d say pay for as good an editing job as you can until you’re able to pay for better. Or hook up with other writers whom you can trust, and trade editing services with. Or perhaps the English teacher will charge a bit less than an editor?
If Sean and I didn’t have one another, or any money for editors, here’s what I would’ve done: I would’ve started writing under an assumed name, gotten the best free help I could’ve gotten, and then saved up my earnings for edits. If the books sold and were well reviewed, I’d stick with the assumed name. If it failed miserably, then at least I could write under a different name without the baggage of being “that guy with the zillion typos.”
I wish I’d thought of using a pen name for my first books. I haven’t been trashed yet, but my name is definitely hanging out there. I suppose, if I have an epic fail, I will have to change my real name–probably to Anderson Cooper.
I appreciate the feedback about editing. I do think it’s an ideal service, and I need to find a way to squeeze that into my budget.
HAHA…I love the podcast guys…I play a little game where I skip through the audio and laugh my ass off. Its’s like “I hate you all”…skip, skip (that’s me skipping FYI)…”fuck you all”….skip, skip, “processes”…skip, skip, “scivener (which is awesome btw)…”fat vampire”….skip, skip “I hate you all”.
Classic